


like one of your french girls

by almostafantasia



Series: Clexa Week 2017 [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends, ClexaWeek2017, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 16:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10136513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostafantasia/pseuds/almostafantasia
Summary: Ever the queen of procrastination, Clarke has left the assignment for her life drawing class to the last minute and found herself without a model. Enter Lexa, because apparently posing naked for each other is something that best friends do…





	

**Author's Note:**

> yes, i watched titanic last week, fight me

“Lexa?”

Glancing up from the screen of her laptop and tugging one of the earbuds out from her ear, Lexa finds Clarke leaning on her doorframe, looking into the bedroom where Lexa lounges lazily on her bed.

“Mmm?”

“You know that I love you?”

Lexa shuts the lid of her laptop and sets it aside on the nightstand beside her bed to give Clarke her full attention. Knowing Clarke as well as she does, she tilts her head to the side, raises a single eyebrow questioningly, and asks, “What do you want?”

Clarke’s face drops and she rolls her eyes at how well Lexa knows her.

“Okay, so hear me out,” she begins, “but you know my life drawing class?”

Shuddering at the memory of the one time that Lexa came home from her own classes to find a large painting of an incredibly naked man leaning against the couch in their shared apartment, Lexa replies with a grimace.

“How can I forget?”

“Well,” Clarke explains, “we were supposed to work on a project outside of class but you know what I’m like – procrastination is my middle name.”

“You haven’t done it,” Lexa concludes.

“And I need to do it by Monday,” Clarke says with a nod. She bites at her lower lip nervously, then continues, “The thing is, I haven’t been able to find a model at such short notice. And well … _you’re_ right here and you said that you were just going to be watching Netflix all afternoon so…?”

Clarke trails off, the tone of her voice rising at the end as she looks at Lexa with a question on her face.

Lexa is embarrassingly slow to pick up on what Clarke is asking her. In fact, it is only after a good five seconds of racking her brains to see if she knows anybody who might be willing to pose for Clarke, five seconds in which Clarke’s face gradually moves through pink and to a deeply flushed red, that she realises that Clarke is asking if that person can be _her_.

“You want me to…? Oh, right. Um, _wow_.”

“It’s just a drawing,” Clarke is quick to explain, her voice a little higher in pitch and her words coming out at a much faster speed than Lexa is used to from her, all the while avoiding making any eye contact with Lexa. “It’s nothing you have to be embarrassed about. There’s a mindset that you get into as an artist when there’s a live model in front of you. It’s like I won’t even register that you’re naked. And the final product will be classy, not provocative or anything.”

“I would be completely naked?” Lexa asks for clarification.

“Yeah,” nods Clarke, and for the first time since asking for this favour from Lexa, they make eye contact. Gesturing to her own chest, Clarke continues, “Well, your … um, your breasts would be on show but there are plenty of poses that are quite modest on the … on the _downstairs_ region.”

It is without a doubt the most awkward conversation of Lexa’s entire life – even more awkward than when her Uncle Gustus took her aside after dinner when she was younger and attempted to give her the sex talk, only for her to tell him that her cousin Anya had already explained everything to her. Never in her life did Lexa imagine that she would find herself discussing her own nudity with her roommate in such a clinical way.

It’s an awful lot to process all at once. She and Clarke have seen each other naked before, it’s almost inevitably going to happen at some point when you live together. But there’s a huge difference between a quick flash of skin when running from the shower to the bedroom when you’ve forgotten your towel, and presenting yourself fully nude to be carefully studied and immortalised on paper.

When Lexa still hasn’t said anything, Clarke speaks up once more and says, “You’re allowed to say no. You don’t have to do it if it’ll make you uncomfortable.”

“What, and let you fail your class?” Lexa forces herself to laugh, pretending as though she isn’t dying on the inside at the thought of sitting naked in front of her roommate. “What are best friends for if not posing nude for an art class? I’m pretty sure it’s in the friendship handbook.”

Her attempts at humour do a little to relieve the tension in the air and Clarke visibly relaxes a little bit where she stand in Lexa’s doorway.

“Only you would have a handbook for friendship.” Clarke rolls her eyes at Lexa, then looks at her with a hopeful expression on her face as she asks, “So you’ll do it?”

“Of course I will,” Lexa snorts as if there is even a possibility of her saying no, even though every part of her brain is screaming that posing naked for Clarke is one of the worst ideas in the world.

“Is now a good time?”

“Now? I…” Lexa pauses and takes a moment to process what Clarks is asking of her, then when she decides that she’s probably going to need about a month to psyche herself up for, realises that it’s probably best if she doesn’t give herself time to think about it at all. Her mouth suddenly incredibly dry, Lexa nods and says, “Now is good. Can I … can you give me half an hour or so to take a shower and shave my legs?”

“Of course! I need to set up anyway!” Clarke starts to back up into the hallway outside Lexa’s bedroom but stops after a couple of steps and adds, “Thanks, Lexa. I owe you massively.”

“Not a problem!” Lexa replies cheerily.

It’s most likely going to be a _huge_ problem, but Clarke doesn’t need to know that.

* * *

Lexa takes her time in the shower. She knows that Clarke isn’t going to care how much hair she has on her body, but if there’s going to be a drawing of her naked out there for the rest of eternity, she can’t help but want it to be one where she’s well-groomed. She washes her hair thoroughly, lathering it up until her entire head is covered in a layer of white foam, then lets it rinse until all of the soap is gone. Though she shaves her legs meticulously, Lexa decides to keep the hair on the rest of her body, though she makes sure that it’s tidy enough to be seen by another human being. This is going to be uncomfortable enough without her being self-conscious about whether or not she should have shaved everywhere.

The routine continues out of the shower – multiple different hair products as she dries it, body lotion, moisturiser, a thin layer of natural looking makeup. Lexa does all that she can to make herself look as effortlessly perfect as possible.

(She ignores the obvious fact that the longer it takes her to get ready, the bigger the delay before she has to strip in front of Clarke.)

Finally, when there is nowhere else on her body to massage lotion, Lexa dresses herself in nothing but a fluffy bathrobe. She has no idea what the professionals do, but it seems like a better option than just marching into their living room without a shred of clothing on her body.

“Are you ready for me?” Lexa asks, padding barefoot out of the bathroom and standing coyly in the entrance to the living room, where Clarke has moved the furniture around a little in order to place a stool against the backdrop of the blank wall where the couch usually sits, opposite an easel that Clarke has set up for herself on the other side of them room. Just seeing the set-up has the nerves in Lexa’s body tripling because it’s _real_ now, and it takes all of her bravery to stop herself from bolting back into the bathroom and locking the door behind.

“Uh huh,” Clarke nods, stepping out from behind the easel to look at Lexa. As Lexa takes a couple of steps further into the room, Clarke’s eyes drop to where her neck emerges from the fluffy confines of the bathrobe, a frown forming on her face. “Is that … have you got glitter on your neck?”

“It’s body lotion,” replies Lexa.

Clarke shakes her head with a smile on her face.

“You’re so extra.”

“Don’t pretend that you don’t like it,” Lexa teases. “Where do you want me?”

The abruptness of Lexa’s change of subject catches them both by surprise. The familiar teasing, the relapse into a friendship between two roommates who don’t draw each other naked, almost had Lexa forgetting what she’s about to do but that simple question brings them both crashing back to reality. Clarke looks away immediately, fumbling around with the pencils that she has neatly lined up on a table beside the easel as a way of distracting herself from Lexa.

“On the stool over there,” Clarke says without looking up. “Take your time, make yourself comfortable, and then we’ll sort out a pose.”

Lexa crosses the room to the stool that Clarke has set up for her and takes a seat, still wearing the bathrobe as she familiarises herself with the view in front of her. Clarke’s easel is set up in front of the window, over which she’s draped a couple of thin silk pieces of fabric that shield the room from the outside world but still lets in plenty of light.

Lexa slowly lets her robe drop to the floor, discarding it away to the side and tries to get comfortable on the stool now that she has nothing to cover herself up. She tries to pretend that she’s still got the robe on, or that she’s at least wearing some underwear, but she finds herself unable to look up at Clarke, even when she decides that she’s ready.

“Okay, I’m ready to start.”

“Cross one of your legs over the other,” says Clarke, and though she doesn’t look at Clarke, Lexa is pretty sure that she can feel Clarke’s eyes burning holes through her skin. “Whichever one is more comfortable for you.”

Lexa tests out both ways and then settles for having her right leg over her left.

“Okay,” says Clarke. “Happy with that?”

“I think so.”

Clarke takes a step to the side and tilts her head slightly, then says, “Right, turn a bit to your left. A little bit more, little bit more … stop! That’s perfect!” Moving back behind her easel, Clarke points down and says, “Chin down.”

Lexa does as she’s told, following Clarke’s instructions until she’s happy with the positioning of Lexa’s head. Clarke does it all with a professional ease and Lexa is grateful for that and the way that it takes some of the focus off the fact that she is naked.

“Okay,” says Clarke, nodding in satisfaction. “Last thing, look up at me.”

Lexa takes her time with this last order because for as long as she doesn’t look at Clarke, it feels like she can ignore the fact that she’s sitting here naked, everything on show for Clarke to see. The moment that she looks up and acknowledges that Clarke is standing on the other side of the room, ready to draw her, will be the moment that she has to finally accept that this is happening.

And then she does it, she lifts her gaze and looks straight at Clarke, and she vaguely registers that Clarke is telling her that her pose is perfect but her brain doesn’t process it properly because she’s so overwhelmed with embarrassment to process _anything_ right now.

The first couple of minutes are the hardest. Clarke doesn’t start drawing, not immediately, but just moves this way and that with a thoughtful expression on her face. Her eyes burn into Lexa’s skin, not leaving her body once, and Lexa cowers under the scrutiny. Clarke, trained to see everything with the eye of an artist, doesn’t miss it with her heightened observational skills.

“Relax,” she says, her voice low and soothing.

It’s difficult to relax but Lexa does the best that she can. It’s not that she’s self-conscious about being naked – she’s ahppy with her body, knows that she looks _good_ , even – and Clarke is hardly the first girl to see her naked, nor is she the first girl who has been naked in front of Clarke. She’s just not used to having every inch of her nude body scrutinised in such a way.

Scrutinised by her _best friend_ in such a way.

Finally, after two minutes that seem to stretch out like two hours, Clarke picks up a pencil and starts to sketch and outline in broad strokes on the paper set up in front of her. Lexa lets out a sigh of relief and her body relaxes a little, but only until she realises that she’s now being drawn like this, and then her mind has another mini freak out.

Lexa focuses on techniques that she’s learned through regular yoga and meditation, letting her mind distance itself from the immediate situation and settle into a certain kind of headspace until she no longer feels like she is sitting bare in front of Clarke, but merely assisting Clarke with an art project for one of her classes.

“This is awfully liberating,” she comments aloud. “If law school doesn’t work out, I might join a nudist colony.”

“Shh,” Clarke hushes her, one pencil caught between her teeth as she uses another to capture what she sees on the paper.

“Sorry,” mumbles Lexa. “I tend to babble when I’m nervous.”

“Forget I’m even here.”

And that’s exactly what Lexa does. It’s much easier when she’s managed to get herself in a mindset that allows her to ignore the very obvious elephant in the room. She goes over other situations where she might find herself naked – in the shower, in bed if it’s a hot summer night and wearing pyjamas is just too much - and when she realises that being naked isn’t as weird of a concept as her brain is trying to trick her into thinking that it is, it’s much easier to get by.

Until, after god knows how much time has passed, they reach the final stage when Clarke asks for Lexa’s eye contact once again.

“Look at me now,” she tells Lexa. “Keep your head still. Eyes up.”

Lexa drags her gaze up slowly, finally letting her eyes meet Clarke’s.

“Good,” says Clarke, not breaking the eye contact. “Now stay just like that.”

It’s absolute torture for the next twenty minutes. Her gaze drops twice in the first five minutes and Clarke has to remind her both times to look up once more. After that she doesn’t dare to let her eyes fall for even a second.

This, Lexa decides, is even more intimate than having Clarke draw the rest of her body. Somehow looking at Clarke and having Clarke stare right back at her, the curious expression of an analytical artist on her face, has Lexa feeling much more self-conscious than when Clarke was tracing the shape of her hips, or when she could feel Clarke’s gaze studying the curves of her breasts.

Lexa recites lists in her head to distract herself from Clarke’s presence in the room, she goes through the alphabet naming countries that start with each letter, then when she’s finished with countries she moves onto animals, then types of fruit, and when she’s done with that she starts reciting her multiplication tables. It does nothing to relieve from the agony of having Clarke staring right in the eye while drawing but she tries to trick herself into thinking that it’s helping.

After an eternity, Clarke finally speaks up.

“Nearly done. Just a couple more … and then if I just…”

Clarke trails off, her eyes flitting between Lexa and the drawing in front of her and back again a few times until she places her pencils back down on the table beside her and takes a couple of steps back.

“All done.”

Still naked, Lexa clambers off the stool and stretches out her stuff muscles from being sat still for so long, then bends down to pick the fluffy bathrobe off the floor and slips her arms into it. She doesn’t even have time to tie it properly around her waist when Clarke crosses the room and wraps her arms around Lexa.

“Thank you so much,” she says gratefully. “I can’t even imagine how uncomfortable that must have been for you. I seriously owe you one.”

Lexa merely shrugs and Clarke releases her from the embrace.

“Consider yourself lucky,” Lexa jokes to lighten the mood. “Not everybody gets to see this hot bod!”

She gestures down at herself, forgetting that the robe is still open at the front and Clarke’s eyes go almost comically wide when she looks down and realises the same thing, as if she hasn’t just spent her afternoon studying every inch of Lexa’s naked body.

Dragging her eyes back up to Lexa’s face, her cheeks flushed, Clarke says, “Please don’t ever say _hot bod_ again! You sound like Raven.”

“Oh god,” Lexa groans, reaching for the tie of her bathrobe and knotting it around her waist.

“Seriously though,” says Clarke, “thank you for this. And it goes without saying but I’m not going to go around showing this drawing to everybody. It stays between you and me.”

“You, me, and your art professor.”

Clarke makes a noncommittal noise and accompanies it with a shrug, then reaches out for Lexa’s hand and starts leading her across the room to the easel.

“So,” she grins, “do you want to see the final thing?”

With a buzzing combination of both nerves and excitement coursing through her body, Lexa nods and lets Clarke lead her over to the easel, standing shoulder to shoulder with her best friend as she looks at the drawing of herself.

It’s … it’s – _wow_. Lexa can’t find the words to describe it. All logical thought leaves her brain, along with the ability to form coherent sentences. Lexa is first struck by just how _real_ it is, how Clarke has somehow managed to capture the beauty of the female body with all its imperfections – there’s a little roundness to Lexa’s belly from the angle that she’s sitting at, and her thighs are chunkier than they would be if it were a drawing of her standing up but it’s still so beautiful that Lexa almost forgets that it’s a drawing of her at first.

And then her gaze shifts her drawn face and she actually stops breathing for a little bit because _wow_. Clarke has managed to capture something in Lexa’s eyes that Lexa isn’t sure was even there. There’s an essence of something dark, something seductive from the way that she looks up from under lidded eyes with her mouth slightly parted. Lexa thinks back to how nervous she was throughout the whole process of having her face drawn, how she was doing everything she could to ignore the way that Clarke looked at her, and wonders how Clarke can possibly have seen _this_ in her eyes, let alone been able to capture it on paper.

“Well, it’s better than the stick figures I can draw,” Lexa jokes in an attempt to stop her heart from racing quite so much.

“I should hope so!” Clarke quips back. Her expression suddenly turning more solemn as she looks up at Lexa for validation, she asks hopefully, “But you like it, right?”

“Like it? Clarke, I _love_ it. It’s … this is how you see me?”

“What do you mean?” Clarke frowns.

“I mean,” Lexa struggles to find the words to explain what she means, “it’s … it’s _intimate_ , like we shared something really special here today and you managed to get that down on paper. But at the same time, I was nervous out of my mind the entire time but you didn’t capture that, you managed to capture so much more. I’m just blown away by how incredible this is.”

Clarke flusters under Lexa’s comments and just mumbles, “I just draw what I see.”

“I know,” Lexa nods, “and that’s why this blows me away because you see _that_. You see this in me, you see stuff that I’m not even aware is there inside me.”

Without any warning at all, Clarke surges forward and reaches up to cup Lexa’s cheek with her hand, pressing her lips against Lexa’s before Lexa can even realise what is happening. Lexa startles, flinching under Clarke’s touch, then when she’s finally processed what’s happening enough to kiss back, Clarke has already pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke launches into an apology. “I don’t know what came over me. I shouldn’t have done that. You’re still…” Clarke gestures down to Lexa’s bathrobe and says, “You’re barely dressed. I don’t know why I did that.”

Smiling to herself, Lexa mumbles, “That explains so much,” and then closes the gap between their mouths herself this time, tilting Clarke’s head up with a finger placed under her chin and then burying the same hand in Clarke’s messy blonder curls. She feels Clarke relax into the kiss, her lips soft and responsive, her hands curling into Lexa’s waist through the soft material of her bathrobe.

Clarke pulls away for air and rests her forehead against Lexa’s, a blissful smile on her face.

“Not what I was expecting when I asked you to strip for me,” she jokes.

“We’re doing this in completely the wrong order,” Lexa agrees.

Leaning in for another kiss, Clarke replies, “I don’t even care.”


End file.
